“Fox & Friends,” President Donald Trump’s favorite TV show, gave him some bold advice on Thursday: Get off Twitter.
As the social media company has begun slapping warning labels on tweets containing falsehoods or inciting violence, co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade ― along with guest Matt Walsh of Daily Wire ― complained Trump was being unfairly censored.
After Walsh griped that he, too, was being censored, Kilmeade started wondering. “Why do you patronize a big-tech company like this when they continue to show a lack of respect for you?” he asked. “The president should start. If the president takes his followers and goes somewhere else, that will be a tweetstorm.”
Trump, who has made tweeting to his 88 million followers a centerpiece of his presidency, has increasingly been thwarted by the social media company for posting disinformation and falsehoods. Twitter, accused of being a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, has begun flagging tweets by Trump and his supporters with warnings for misinformation or inciting violence.
In the “Fox & Friends” discussion with Walsh, the hosts showed a censored Walsh tweet questioning the unfinished vote counting.
Walsh said Twitter is “editorializing,” becoming less of a platform and more of a publisher, and said this sort of censoring has also been happening to Trump.
Kilmeade pushed further, suggesting Walsh’s tweet wouldn’t have been flagged if it had been about Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Walsh added that Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who spoke out against Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination weren’t censored.
“Those people aren’t being shut down on Twitter the way that I have been, the way the president has been,” said Walsh.
Walsh complained that tech titans like Facebook and Twitter dominate social media, “so we have to contend with that.”
Earhardt chimed in that some people are switching to Parler, which The Washington Post has described as a Twitter clone for conservatives.
In Phoenix on Wednesday night, some of Trump’s supporters turned on Fox News, unhappy that the network called the outcome of the election in Arizona for Biden.
“Fox News sucks,” they chanted.